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Not so. For example, newlines and semi-colons have special meanings in file operations and printing output. Also, BBC BASIC doesnt use GOSUB labels, so you can only GOSUB to the beginning of a newline-delineated line, similar to GOTO.

Yes, I see how the two are similare enough so as to be interchangeable. Maybe, if you don't want your program to run.

You're kidding right?

There's lots of ARM dev kits out there, chumby hacker board, netduino, cortex, etc.

Not forgetting where ARM came from (ARM = acorn research machine[s]?) there's an old list here:

http://productsdb.riscos.com/comp/curr.htm

Then there is an desktop operating system for the above called RISCOS http://www.riscos.com/

Of course a lot of these pages are rather old now, and you'll find lots of broken links ... which can only tell you one thing....

ARM is an old cpu, only 10 years younger than the 8086, which has found it's niche in embedded systems rather than desktops.

You're kidding right?

There's lots of ARM dev kits out there, chumby hacker board, netduino, cortex, etc.

Not forgetting where ARM came from (ARM = acorn research machine[s]?) there's an old list here:

http://productsdb.riscos.com/comp/curr.htm

Then there is an desktop operating system for the above called RISCOS http://www.riscos.com/

Of course a lot of these pages are rather old now, and you'll find lots of broken links ... which can only tell you one thing....

ARM is an old cpu, only 10 years younger than the 8086, which has found it's niche in embedded systems rather than desktops.

RISC OS is not technically dead.

I hope they enter this field

You mean like the Apple eMate from 1997?

Ok, its hardly a "netbook" - but ubiquitous WiFi and mobile internet weren't really on the menu in 1997. Actually, the failure of this, and also the Psion Series 7 might suggest that mobile web browsing was the missing ingredient needed to get the "small, cheap laptop" market off the ground.

As for the MacBook Air, I think Apple were a bit unlucky with the timing: it was clearly intended to compete with other "premium" ultra-compact laptops from Sony et. al. - instead, everybody seemed to put it head-to-head with the (brilliant, but more Fischer Price than Jonathan Ive) EEE PC 701.

Well, there's already a $99 laptop available with a widely used OS, if you're prepared to forgo x86 compatibility and modern specifications (although I bet it'd run RISC OS without too much trouble... hmm, maybe there's an idea there?)

My version: abolish open/save dialogs and just use Finder/Explorer.

This is exactly what RISCOS does. Example. You type in the name and drag the icon to a folder to save. To open, you drag the icon from the folder onto the application's icon. Too bad the hardware never seemed to reach the USA (Acorn, the creator was UK based).

Acorn (now defunct but progenitor of ARM) had a wimp GUI years before Microsoft Windows and one which all who have tried both acclaim as far easier to use. See http://productsdb.riscos.com/admin/ros_test.htm for the reasons why. It is still extant. The ROX desktop, http://rox.sourceforge.net/ is based on it.

For those of you who think he's just trolling, take a look at RiscOS.

I play Elite on my Archimedes using RISC OS.

Having an application as a directory is not really an apple innovation, but has existed before in RISC OS and the related ROX. Look up this page and search for 'application directory'.

The first system I used with this facility was RISC OS which was on the Acorn 32 bit RISC computers and was back in 1989. In fact the operating system supports a protocol which allows anyone to replace the standard help application. It was another six years before I saw it on a Windows platform.

Apple, or Be ?
In 1996 BeOS stood as the most promising environment around.
There was also RiscOS, BTW. which could have gone very far (it's actually present in loads of set top boxen).

Well, I actively avoided MS software and IBM PC-compatible hardware from 1981 until 1997, using RISC OS on Acorn Archimedes among others. I even wrote my own small multitasking OS in 8-bit assembly (which fitted in 1 kilobyte after some trickery). In 1997, I bought an IBM-compatible PC with MS Windows NT4 because I had to professionally: that's the result of a monopoly!
OK, I also use Linux on my PCs, but Linux (as oposed to _Linux distributions_ like Red Hat or Mandrake) is not a commercial product, and that's exactly why it (or other open/free software) has a chance to break the MS monopoly. I once even bought a boxed version of BeOS, but we know what happened to BeOS.
Microsoft is a monopolist, they did abuse their monopoly (the list is endless, but the bogus "error messages" that early Windows generated when it was running on DR/DOS is a good example) and almost everybody uses their software.

Another OS which proposed a very ergonomical approach to file system design and implementation was RiscOS.
Check its Programmer Reference Manuals if you can find these.

Something like RISC OS? That's had the entire OS in ROM since the 1980s.

Some of the files had special names. !Boot and !Run, for example; !Boot was executed when the application was first seen by the filer (and did things like load the application's icon, register file types, etc) and !Run was executed when the application was double-clicked on.

Unfortunately, Acorn weren't thinking about security when they designed this. (Hey, state of the art in those days was MS-DOS 3 and System 6.) !Boot in particular was a virus-writer's heaven. Stick your floppy disc in the drive, bring up a browser window and your virus automagically loads...

Incidentally, you can still buy Risc OS if you have an Acorn micro or a clone thereof. At one stage someone had even done a port to the Psion Netbook, but that seems to have evaporated. In terms of usability, it still knocks the Windows and MacOS desktops into a cocked hat --- despite being designed about two decades ago. If you want something more modern, and free, the ROX Desktop incorporates a lot of Risc OS' design elements into a desktop system that runs on Linux and X. Damn well, too.

He's also wrong in claiming they were the first 32 bit systems available. I hate articles like this because nobody ever mentions any computers from outside of the United States.

The Amiga 1200 was launched in December 1992 but before that a British company called Acorn Computers released the Archimedes range of computers, the next generation after their 8 bit systems (Atom, BBC A/B/B+, Master, Master Compact). Starting with the A305, A310, A410 & A440 in mid 1989 these machines had 32bit ARM2 processors (from which the Intel XScale/StrongARM chips out now originated), the Arthur (later RISCOS (Screenshot) operating system in ROM (instant bootup!), wonderful GUI, built in BBC Basic and easy ARM assembler access, 8 channel stereo sound, etc.

My first computer was a BBC B in 1982 (which should have been mentioned for it's incredible robustness and shedload of I/O ports.. you could link it to anything, oh and for being the machine the original version of Elite was written for) to an Acorn A3000 in 1990, before going PC 94'ish. Shortly after Linux appeared so all was ok again ;)

An image search in google will show you several machines and desktops. Actually I did before I posted, but forgot to include the link to the image.

Here is an example of the taskbar in action (a modern version, but nothing really big has changed)

Sigh, reminds me of RISC OS - a ROM based operating system. You still had the BIOS (bit it was very titchy IIRC) and then you had two 2Mb ROM chips on the motherboard which held the OS - extremely quick to boot and very very hard to get infected with viruses (although I believe RISC OS have now brought out "flashable ROMs" to save people having to by a new 99UKP set of ROMs everytime there's a major OS update). What about patches etc? Well, those can be "soft loaded" on boot if necessary.

RiscOS could get from a cold boot to the GUI in less than 4 seconds on an ARM3/8MHz.
I can't even measure it now on a StrongARM/202MHz, also consider the newest RiscOS powered computer : Iyonix (Xscale/600MHz)...

Which one do I use at home?

It has to be RISC OS by Acorn.

I wish some person would do a proper study of the various OSes and include this UKmade OS because it rocks!

When using this OS I feel so much more productive and it certainly irritates me the least. Must be the 3 button Mouse it uses, or perhaps it's the way it seems to be put together as it's so easy to add functionally without rebooting for example.

I believe a clone of its Filer part can be found for Linux Gnome under the name ROX.

Amazingly RISC OS has been around since 1990(!) and is quite refreshing to use a GUI that isn't just a rehash of Windows.

http://www.iyonix.com/
http://www.riscos.com/
http://rox.sourceforge.net/comments.php3

ROX is a desktop manager that isn't about mimicking any "desktop style", but focuses on usability issues [...]

Probably worth mentioning that these usability concepts (Application Filer, Drag & Drop Saving etc) were originally based on RISC OS; ROX stands for "RISC OS on X".

When I did use RISC OS, I always found the Filer a quite intuitive way of working, although it could sometimes be easy to lose a filer window behind the application, and thus require you to move/resize windows around to be able to drag and drop the save file into the filer window. However, as RISC OS only brought a window to the front if you clicked on one of the window gadgets (titlebar, size icon etc) it was possible to have the filer window open over the application, and still activate drag and drop save from the app to the filer window in the foreground. Pretty good considering the system was released some 15 years ago.

I haven't used ROX since I briefly tried the 1.0 release, so I'll be interested to give this latest version a go, especially since I no longer use RISC OS for day-to-day use.

Ever heard of RISC OS It's been around for about ten years now. It was used widely in schools (until Blair started getting chummy with a certain Mr Gates) on British designed hardware by Acorn. Now-a-days the Brits contribute a lot to the open source community. Alan Cox and Russell King are two notable personalities.

I for one definitely don't say give me microsoft and probably use more european software than american software. My hardware is mainly Taiwanese, Korean or Japanese except for the SGIs. The US is definitely not the fount of all knowledge and technology.

As "embedded" CPUs like the ARM and XScale get faster, you may start to see them in more traditionally "desktop" applications.

Hasn't ARM architecture on the desktop already happened?

But unless a new non-x86 architecture can run the latest PC games, and run them at full speed (i.e. not through Bochs), the public probably won't flock to it.

The sad thing is that I had really heard nice things about RISCOS... if it were possible to get an old machine inexpensively in the US, I would have tried it.

That's a bit like saying that you would not buy a second hand 486 with MS DOS on, because a different PC manufacturing company ripped off some GPL code last year to get part of their new system working.

I think a lot of people are getting Castle confused with RISC OS, and in this case even Acorn, who don't exist any more - the code being discussed is for the new Castle Iyonix machine, released just before Christmas 2002. It is the first 32 bit RISC OS machine, and as such needs a 32 bit OS. Castle have released RISC OS 5, which is based on RISC OS which is licensed by Pace, who bought it from Acorn just before they were closed down (about 5 years ago I believe).

It is RISC OS 5 that has the alleged GPL breach; previous versions of RISC OS have nothing to do with Castle, apart from Castle's machines run RISC OS.

As a general comment, it would be nice if people on slashdot spent a little more time looking into the facts before posting.

On a separate note, if you really are interested in getting an old Acorn machine, there are a lot of second hand Acorn machines available at extremely reasonable prices if you're willing to spend a little time looking for it - for example, newsgroups, community websites, magazines (such as Archive, which has a small ads section), or companies which sell second hand RISC OS machines, like CJE Micros.

Lots of people here seem to think that Castle own RISC OS, or that RISC OS Ltd own it. This is not true. After Acorn Computers finished in 1998, the set-top box division of it was bought by Pace Micro Technology in June 1999 (Acorn Computers itself changed name to Element 14). This sale included RISC OS.

Pace still owns the copyright to RISC OS. RISCOS Ltd was set up and licenced the code, which has been released as RISC OS 4. This is what you can buy to upgrade Acorn RISC PC computers (and other Archimedes machines, like the A7000).

Castle Technology recently also licenced RISC OS from Pace, completely separate from RISCOS Ltd. This version of RISC OS is being developed for the Iyonix computer and is called RISC OS 5.

This could be an interesting situation, as Castle Technology do not own RISC OS, they only licence it.

You don't understand this - these are no PCs you can run Windows on.

No, it's you who doesn't understand. What makes you think I'd want to run Windows on it? I'm sure the operating system overhead is lower than for Windows, but probably not enough to make up for a four-fold reduction in cycles.

RISC_OS

Heh, 4 full time developers? :-) Even the most obscure Linux port probably has four full-time-equivalent developers.

So it's another proprietary desktop operating system, but one that only runs on slow expensive machines, has an infinitesimal marketshare and development community, isn't unix-compatible, and has a graphic design stuck in the early 90s? I should care why?

Any few of those I could put up with (free/non-unix/marginal, or proprietary/gorgeous) but the combination is pretty damning.

I'm happy to admit that if I'd gone to school in the UK, I'd probably feel all nostalgic and want to buy one. But I didn't and I don't. And I especially don't want to support the kind of rat-bastardry discussed in the original story.

It looks to me like Castle Technologies just happens to sell machines which have RISC OS on them. One of many companies in the UK.
Wouldn't the company in violation be RISCOS Ltd?

An Acorn 3010 computer (early 1990s).
A newish version of RiscOS

Well, Acorn made the Archimedes (which, despite Apple's claims, was the first home computer to use a RISC processor) and then the RISC PC (a old 202Mhz model is sitting next to me at the moment) - just as they were about to launch the RISC PC II (aka Phoebe), Morgan-Stanley Dean Whitter decided that Acorn's shares in ARM Plc (the designers of a whole range of RISC processors - originally the company was called Acorn Risc Machines, then Advanced Risc Machines) were worth more than the company itself and the split the company up.

Most IP rights and staff went to Element 14, but the rights to the RISC OS operating system were sold to Pace who have sub-licenced the rights to RISC OS Ltd. The "Acorn" name and logo itself were sold off to Acorn's largest distributor Castle Technology.

More information is available.

RiscOS has some really neat GUI features, although the OS has failed to evolve and is currently light years behind contemporary preemptive multithreading, networked, journalling blah-di-blah OSs.

Indeed one of the things Acorn got right long before Apple, Microsoft, and most others, is that primarily the OS should integrate applications; you shouldn't expect to integrate with each other. This most clear with Microsoft Office, which over the years has consistently integrated perfectly with itsself, while keeping possible competitors or "plug-in" suppliers away from their honeypot.

Ah well. I guess RiscOS might have been pretty much alive if only Acorn would have taken their loss and GPLed all their sources after one of their bankrubsies...

The ROX Desktop has gone someway to implementing this on X - rather than blindly re-implementing the Windows Way like so many other projects.

Some years ago, I ordered from Acorn the "RiscOS developper reference manuals".
It is not only an exhaustive reference but also comes with a style guide.
I guess this style guide would be invaluable for non-RiscOS developper, especially after browsing through the interface all of shame...
So, why don't these development suites (visual studio, etc) come with such a book ?

You need to check out the Acorn community (or perhaps that's where you're coming from?). Acorn was an English Arm-based home computer of the late 80's that competed (none to sucessfully, outside Britain at least) against Amiga an Atari.

Even though the Acorn community is now shriveled enough to make Amiga look healthy by comparision, they have been the one and only group pushing Arm-based desktops over the last decades.

There seems to be at least a couple hardware resellers still in operation. The pricing didn't seem to extortionate to me, either.

I always thought of Malcolm X as a RISCOS guy myself. Hmm, I guess the X is pretty signifigant evidence against that.

Context sensative menus, ooh, RISC OS had that since approx 1988 - come to think of it, it had most of the Win95+ interface since then too - if it hadn't been British it would have ruled the world.

Well, I guess that's a good reason to obsolete the architecture ;)

Seriously though, MIPS (I believe) ported Unix to their processors, and called it RiscOS, independent of the RISCOS guys.

# MIPS:
* RiscOS, mips-*-riscos*

It is not an issue unique to web pages. It is a potential issue for printing from any application.

Five years ago, when I was an avid user of Acorn RiscOS computers I had a neat applet which solves this problem for printing from any program. (I can't remember the name, and I have done a search).

What it did was to setup a virtual printer that could print arbitrary page sizes by printing tiles through a real printer.

The user would select what size paper they wished to emulate (A1, A0, etc or arbitrary dimensions), and the real printer to print through. The user would then press print from their application. The applet would create and print the tiles, with crop marks etc.

At the time I found the application quite useful, and found it easy to print out A2 or larger posters from any application, through my humble laser jet, and then paste them together.

I am quite surprised that there is no similar feature in CUPS, as IMHO, it would be relatively straight forward to implement, especially for GDI printers, and would be genuinely useful.

I found this article on riscos.com a while back saying they had a project ongoing to get RISC OS working on the Psion netBook PDA. "The SA1100 processor used in the netBook offers 26 bit operational modes that will allow the use of all the current Acorn / RISC OS software". It looks here like Psion are still making the netbook.

Screenshots

I'm a bit of a fan of the Acorn/ARM lineage - it's what I cut my teeth on. After unsuccessful forays at Z80 and 6502 coding, ARM was a dream to code for. When the machines first came out in 1988 (ish), they were talked about as being fast - which of course, they were (compared to the old BBC model B).

Alas, the first version of the OS, "Arthur", was a dreadful letdown, IMHO - considering that, just a year or two later, on the same hardware, RISC OS 2 was released, with proper GUI and multitasking etc. So anyway, then I used RISC OS 2, and then RISC OS 3 when *it* was released. Life was great.

My old A440 machine still sits here beside me, and when I fire it up every so often, there's one thing above all others which strikes me about it - it's so dependent upon the mouse. Typically most of the functions of any RISC OS application were accessed via a menu (keyboard shortcuts were only sparingly provided), and there was no way to invoke/operate the menu without the mouse. Nor switch applications. Nor all sorts of other stuff.

Does anybody know if, now we're at RISC OS 4 (and more), that particular shortcoming has been addressed?

P.S. looking at the screenshot, can I submit a bug report for the typo in "SysLog workspce" ?

Good (dead) old Acorn made some of the best hardware and software of the era. Try a RiscStaion and run RiscOS on it.

Mark my words, the Winblows platform will be emulating this behavior within their usual UI 5 year lag.

Surprisingly, it only took Apple around 14 years to emulate this behaviour from RiscOS.

It wasn't quite as pretty. Just name a directory with a '!' as the first character. Make sure you had some standard names in there (like "!Run") and everything was good. The directory held all the application files needed and you just double-clicked on the directory and the application would run.

And this was all there, along with anti-aliased fonts, in 1987 folks.

And to be blunt, it wouldn't be a a single problem for Microsoft to emulate this behaviour. It only requires a bit of modification to Explorer along with some standard file naming. But true to fashion, they're likely going to fall back on using CLSIDs and other registry horrors to accomplish this.

This site has some more information about Acorn/RISC OS based machines in general, but also has a few screenshots of how RISC OS looks, right at the bottom of the page. RISC OS is alive and well, and can be found here.

Its a ripoff of Acorn Computers RISC OS, (now owned by Pace, the desktop version is developed by RISC OS Ltd). The RISC OS Ltd website

However every person whoes been through the british education system in the last 10 years will be able to use it, as for a while Acorn computers were the mainstay in schools. However I found the drag icon to window to save system annoying myself.

Apparently some of RISC OS is still written in BASIC as well.

Its even closer to the RISC OS desktop - the icons are very similar, the drag file to a Filer window to save action. The names are even the same - Filer, Pinboard etc. ;)

The RISC OS Ltd. webpage - they are the people who develop the RISC OS since Acorn Computers disappeared. There are some pictures of RISC OS 3 and 4 somewhere on the web (search for Graphical User Interface gallery in google, and lok in the mirror of the site that somes out top (if it hasn't returned)).

I personnally use !SmbServer under RiscOS in order to efficiently share some files and printers with Linux and Windows machines.
I just find it amazing and it IMHO has become a true protocol, much beyond its original Linux/Windows filesharing scope.
Thanks !

Short question :
Can a Registered Developper Port something else than Linux to it ?

The PDA actually looks sexy on the hardware side, not on the software side (A friend of mine bought a Linux-iPaq from Lisa and it appears to be quite slow, lacks responsiveness and also burns its batteries in about one hour).

I think some special projects like RiscOS would be more adequate.